Feature by Martin Brady

Father’s Day 2013 brings with it memoirs, nostalgia pieces, books on child-rearing (specifically from Dad’s POV) and also interesting volumes related to golf’s singular, imaginative hold on the father-son bond. We can’t review every item that made it over the transom, but here’s a sampler of our favorites.SEEKING TO UNDERSTANDIn an epic mix of sprawling journalism...

Pick yourself up and dust yourself off

In the summer of 2005, Mardi Jo Link’s broken-down life bore no resemblance to the happy-go-lucky farm life she’d wished for—and read about—as a girl. Instead, her marriage has just unraveled, her soon-to-be ex-husband is living across the street, her bank account is “practically uninhabited” and her three sons are confused, angry and sad. Flying in the face...

Her own hidden life

Known for translating her observations of people and animals into powerful literary prose, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas now studies her own history in the memoir A Million Years With You.Thomas’ story testifies to the value of curiosity. When she was just 18, she dropped out of college to join an anthropological expedition, headed by her father, to the Kalahari Desert, where they would meet...

Between the lines of Anne Frank's diary

Like millions of American children, I read and reread Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, mesmerized by the journal of her two years spent in hiding from the Nazis. Yet the book always remained somewhat cryptic for my young mind: What exactly was an “annex”? Why did Anne and her sister Margot call their father Pim? If Anne was German, why did she live in Holland?Reading Anne Frank:...

The creation of one's own mythology

Elegant and intense, Rebecca Solnit’s award-winning books and essays chart new terrain in history, memoir, philosophy and activism. The Faraway Nearby continues Solnit’s narrative exploration into new forms of nonfiction prose, resembling most closely her 2006 peregrination A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Solnit’s new excursion is gracefully written, accessible and always...